Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

…nervous disorder, with high emotional tensions involved, in many cases stressing a sense of guilt, arising from the inability to forget past experiences. The drug induces a complete state of forgetfulness, from which the patient gradually recovers, retaining basic precepts, rather than the welter of detailed experiences, the impingement of which contributes to his condition.

That’s it, of course! That’s the perfect answer!

The Googles ate of the babu root, perhaps ceremonially, and they forgot, and in the forgetting they sloughed their culture from them, retrogressing four entire culture points. Then, after a time, the effect of the babu root would gradually wear away and they would remember, and remembering, advance up the cultural scale. They would remember, not the details of their former culture, but only its basic precepts, and in that way they’d not climb as high as they had been before. In that way they’d leave a margin through which they would advance toward the next crisis. Then once again, they’d eat of the babu root and once again war would be averted.

For, while the game would determine who would have won the war if one had been fought, the forgetting and the slow recovery from the babu would wipe out the cause of war, would remove the crisis point.

The formula worked because, even before they played the game, the factors of war would have been upset and the crisis point have already disappeared.

“God forgive us,” Sheldon said, “our little grasping souls.”

He went back to the desk and sat down. With a hand that suddenly was heavy, he reached out and thumbed up the communicator for a call to Hart.

“What is it now?” rasped Hart.

“Get out of here,” Sheldon ordered. “Get off this planet as quickly as you can.”

“But the root…”

“There isn’t any root,” said Sheldon. “Not any more, there isn’t any root.”

“I have a contract.”

“Not now,” said Sheldon. “It is null and void, contrary to galactic interests.”

“Contrary!” He could hear Hart choking on his rage. “Look here, Co-ordinator, they need that root out in sector 12. They need …”

“They’ll synthesize it,” Sheldon said. “If they want it they’ll have to synthesize it. There is something more important …”

“You can’t do this,” said Hart.

“I can,” said Sheldon. “If you think I can’t, try me out and see.”

He snapped the toggle down and waited, sweating out the issue.

Then minutes passed before he heard the men running in the ship below, preparing for blast-off.

He watched the planet fade behind them as the ship fled into space.

Courage, he said to himself, thinking of the Googles, the bare, cold courage of it. I hope it’s not too late. I hope we didn’t tempt them too far. I hope they can offset the damage that we did.

There must have been a day when the Googles were a great race, building a great civilization—greater, perhaps, than any culture now in the galaxy. For it would have taken a fantastically advanced people to have done what they have done. It was no job for a Type 10 culture, nor for a Type 6 culture, which is the best that Earth itself can boast.

It had taken intelligence and great compassion, sharp analytical ability, and sober objectivity to figure out the factors and how they could be used.

And it had taken courage beyond imagination to activate the course those ancient Googles had worked out—to trade a culture that might have reached Type 2 or 3, for a Type 10 culture, because their plan for peace would not work beyond a Type 10 culture.

Once having worked, it must now continue working. All the courage of the race must not now be lost. It is a formula that must not be allowed to fail. It must not be allowed to fail because of the profit that traders made out of the babu root. It must not be allowed to fail through contact with other uncouth creatures who might be higher on the cultural yardstick, but who are without the common sense and the courage of the Googles.

And another thing—we must not run the chance that the babu root became a mere article of commerce. We could not blind the Googles to the greater value of the root, the value in which lay the greatest hope the galaxy had known.

Sheldon went back to the chart he’d made and checked through the information which the Googles had pumped out of the crew, and it added up to just slightly more than a Type 10 culture—a Type 9R, perhaps. And that was dangerous, but probably not too much so, for the Type 10A, if the Googles ever got that far, probably still represented a certain margin of safety. And there was the matter of the lag in the culture, due to the babu -eating, which would probably add an additional safety margin.

But it had been close. Too close for comfort. It demonstrated another factor, the factor of temptation—and that was something that could not be allowed to continue.

He went back to the record reels and spent hours studying the invoices, and once again he saw the cold, stark courage and the insistent dedication of the Googles.

There was not a single item on any of the invoices which went beyond a Type 10 culture.

Imagine, he told himself, settling for a better hoe when they could have had atomic engines!

Imagine, for five hundred years, refusing merchandise and comfort that would have made the Googles a greater people and a happier and more leisured people.

Greater and happier — and, more than likely, dead.

Once long ago, in mighty cities now hidden in the dust of the planet’s surface, the Googles must have learned the terrible bitterness of a most artful and accomplished war and must have recoiled from the death and agony and the blind futility, and the knowledge of that day still dwelt within the minds of the Googles of today.

And that knowledge the galaxy could not afford to lose.

Sheldon picked up the chart and rolled it into a cylinder and slipped a couple of rubber bands around it. He put the reels away.

For five hundred years the Googles had held out against the lure of traders who would have given them anything they asked for the babu root. Traders who, even if they had known the truth, still would have willingly and thoughtlessly wrecked the protective Type 10 culture for the sake of profit.

They had held out for five hundred years. How much longer could they hold out? Not forever, certainly. Perhaps not for a great deal longer.

The chief and his tribe had weakened momentarily in acquiring information beyond the Type 10 culture limit. Might that not mean that already the moral fiber was weakening, that the years of trading had already sown their poison?

And if the Googles had not held out—if they did not hold out—the galaxy then would be the poorer and the bloodier.

For the day would come, many years from now perhaps, when it might be safe to make a survey, to conduct a study of this great thing the Googles had accomplished.

And out of that study certainly would come the first great step toward peace throughout the galaxy, a hint as to how the principle might apply without the stultifying need of a static culture.

But the study itself could not be made for many years. Not until the random factors of the last five hundred years of trade had been swept away.

He sat down at the desk, pulled out the voice-writer, and inserted a sheet of paper.

He spoke a heading which the machine printed quickly:

RECOMMENDATION FOR THE INDEFINITE CLOSING OF THE PLANET ZAN TO ALL VISITORS AND TRADERS.